US Government Meddling in Ukraine Election

While I am afraid we may have seen only the tip of the iceberg, one part that we do know thus far is that the US government, through the US Agency for International Development (USAID), granted millions of dollars to the Poland-America-Ukraine Cooperation Initiative (PAUCI), which is administered by the US-based Freedom House.

PAUCI then sent US Government funds to numerous Ukrainian non-governmental organizations (NGOs). This would be bad enough and would in itself constitute meddling in the internal affairs of a sovereign nation. But, what is worse is that many of these grantee organizations in Ukraine are blatantly in favor of presidential candidate Viktor Yushchenko.

Consider the Ukrainian NGO International Center for Policy Studies. It is an organization funded by the U.S. government through PAUCI. On its Web site, we discover that this NGO was founded by George Soros’ Open Society Institute. And further on we can see that Viktor Yushchenko himself sits on the advisory board!

And this NGO is not the only one the US government funds that is openly supportive of Viktor Yushchenko. The Western Ukraine Regional Training Center, as another example, features a prominent USAID logo on one side of its website’s front page and an orange ribbon of the candidate Yushchenko’s party and movement on the other. By their proximity, the message to Ukrainian readers is clear: the US government supports Yushchenko.

The Center for Political and Law Reforms, another Ukrainian NGO funded by the US government, features a link at the top of its website’s front page to Viktor Yushchenko’s personal website. Yushchenko’s picture is at the top of this US government funded website.

This May, the Virginia-based private management consultancy Development Associates, Inc., was awarded $100 million by the US government ‘for strengthening national legislatures and other deliberative bodies worldwide.’ According to the organization’s website, several million dollars from this went to Ukraine in advance of the elections.

As I have said, this may only be the tip of the iceberg. There may be many more such organizations involved in this twisted tale.

Even if there aren’t, this is appalling. Heads should roll.

Note: Did you catch that some of the money for Yushchenko was funneled through the group founded and funded by George Soros? Politics does indeed make strange bedfellows.